(13-09-2012 10:09 AM)Impulse Wrote: Sure you can. You just won't and an omniscient god would know that you won't. (Not that I believe in god. I'm just speaking logically here.) You are free to make whatever choices you will and a god would know what those choices would be.

See, we have a linear perceptual dimension, where we go, " if A, then B." There is no sense that "god" would have such limitations. Like back in high school, when I wrote alla them poems to a girl named Suzanne, god coulda showed up and said, " don't you mean Gwynnie?" And I woulda been, fuck you, Lord! And I woulda been wrong.

See, we have a linear perceptual dimension, where we go, " if A, then B." There is no sense that "god" would have such limitations. Like back in high school, when I wrote alla them poems to a girl named Suzanne, god coulda showed up and said, " don't you mean Gwynnie?" And I woulda been, fuck you, Lord! And I woulda been wrong.

Are you folks sure you don't mean to use the word predestination? I don't think omniscience and predestination are necessarily the same thing. Omniscience is simply *knowing* what will happen. Predestination indicates your actions are pre-planned and immutable. An omniscient being could *know* your pre-planned actions and yet have had no hand in their planning.

(13-09-2012 05:46 PM)Cardinal Smurf Wrote: Are you folks sure you don't mean to use the word predestination? I don't think omniscience and predestination are necessarily the same thing. Omniscience is simply *knowing* what will happen. Predestination indicates your actions are pre-planned and immutable. An omniscient being could *know* your pre-planned actions and yet have had no hand in their planning.

(13-09-2012 10:09 AM)Impulse Wrote: Sure you can. You just won't and an omniscient god would know that you won't. (Not that I believe in god. I'm just speaking logically here.) You are free to make whatever choices you will and a god would know what those choices would be.

Freewill is only compatible with omniscience if omnipotence is relinquished.

If omnipotence is retained, freewill cannot coincide with omniscience.

It only subjugates God to a person's free will if God himself doesn't have free will. But, since God in this case would freely choose to let the person choose, he wouldn't be subjugated - just freely observing without interfering.

"Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea." --Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Freewill is only compatible with omniscience if omnipotence is relinquished.

If omnipotence is retained, freewill cannot coincide with omniscience.

It only subjugates God to a person's free will if God himself doesn't have free will. But, since God in this case would freely choose to let the person choose, he wouldn't be subjugated - just freely observing without interfering.

His freewill is governed by omniscience and omnipotence, though. Anyway you spin it, you can get around already knowing and having complete power. No one can act outside of that complete power, thus God has orchestrated everything.

Your example is of the God Rock paradox. It's not that God can't give a person the freedom to choose, it's just that it's against His omnipotent character. Relinquishing power to an imperfect being creates imperfection; something God cannot do. The example is a paradox, and simply, cannot exist.

It's not a matter of can or can't... it's just a matter of it not being.

In short, if God chooses to let someone have freewill, then He is giving up His omnipotence - even if it's just once and minute. If He gives up even the slightest bit of omnipotence, then He isn't nor ever was omnipotent. God is contradicting His own omnipotence, which, as previously stated, simply cannot be.

Presupposing the Christian creator-god with omnipotence and omniscience, then way back even before he said "Let there be light", he knew that I would be born, that I would reject the concept of imaginary-Jesus as my lord and savior, and that I would burn in hell for eternity.(Not just me, but since I'm a heathen atheist unbound by god-given morality, I'm going to only concern myself with me for this argument). So despite knowing my outcome, he still created the universe, set up the rules so that I would fail - knowing that I will fail - and condemned me to hell that I cannot escape. I cannot pretend to believe because that won't fool his omniscience, and I can't make myself believe in nonsense nor can I make myself ignore the preponderance of facts against such belief.

So I'm doomed. With no escape. And billions of other humans will suffer the same fate, all without free will.

On the other hand, billions (or 144,000) of Christians will be saved and will exist in eternal bliss in Heaven, based on their gullibility and their inability to apply critical thinking and their unwillingness to examine simple facts and mountains of evidence. God knew each of them, who they would be, what choices they would make, and that they would be saved, all before he said "Let there be light", so they also have no free will.

As far as I'm concerned, that right there proves I don't have free will, and neither does anyone else. Sure, I might have the free will to decide whether or not to eat this doughnut on my desk. But I don't have the free will to escape eternal damnation and Christians don't have free will to accept Christ as their savior.

This is not to say that the whole thing is "fated". That's just as much nonsense as the god concept. God didn't decide to force me to go to hell, he simply created this universe, this world, me, the rules, and hell, all while fully knowing how I am going to end up. That knowledge is based on who I am and what I learn and discover and think about during my life (all of which the omniscient god knew before he created any of it), not on same predestination or fate that was decided for me.

Fortunately, this rambling of mine is based on a few pretty huge and indefensible presuppositions, none of which really exist, which means it's all moot point. I DO, in fact, have free will because there is no omnipotent and omniscient entity holding me accountable to a nonsensical iron-age mythology.

Unless we want to bring Sam Harris into the picture - he makes a pretty good neurological argument that nobody has free will at all, even without god concepts.

"Whores perform the same function as priests, but far more thoroughly." - Robert A. Heinlein

Allow me to quote the terse&deadly one, for he has written a post that applies to this thread as well.

(12-09-2012 09:28 AM)Chas Wrote: When you bring evidence of a god, I will discuss its attributes. Until you have evidence of existence, I think you should all just shut the fuck up. Your theological masturbation is boring, and your insistence on injecting it into discussions is annoying.